805 – 825 ASF

Many travelers will tell you that a visit to Great Forks is invaluable, if only for the chance that some of the city’s good luck—past, present, and hopefully future—might rub off on you. I, too, bought into this enticing rumor. At least until I woke up one morning and discovered that all of my money had been stolen.

There were no signs of a break-in while I’d been sleeping. Nor could I see why my fellow students would turn to thievery, and I trusted them as friends besides. I wanted to report this to Lorekeeper Chrasse, but the old man was nowhere to be found. Clueless and penniless, I wondered if, somehow, I’d offended the rivers and ravens.

Even the first King of Rivona respected the rivers and ravens. If we go back to pre-Ruthless Rugon, where few songs and scholars go, we begin to see that when the king gave his firstborn child to the river, it was not a streak of uncharacteristic zealotry. It was a cursed waystone on a path he had been following all his life.

Into the Swamp, a precautionary lullaby favored by Rivonan mothers, tells the story of how a ten-year-old Rugon ran away from home and became lost in the eastern swamps. For a week he wandered aimlessly, encountering man-swallowing bogs, freezing mists, and even glimpses of corvil, elusive black birds so large they can carry off small livestock and children. Only by praying to the rivers and ravens and trusting in their ancient wisdom was young Rugon able to find his way back home.

Thereafter, Rugon carried forward a reverence of these faceless gods. His adolescence and young adulthood were marked by more streaks of good luck: a victorious and mortal duel with a childhood rival, a swim across the White Fangs to affirm his eligibility as chieftain, and of course, his rise as Ruthless.

All of these tales Rugon affirmed himself. All of these he attributed to the blessing and favor of the rivers and ravens.

Rugon, however, did not want to rely on luck alone to keep his winnings. Across several wives, he fathered two sons and seven daughters, not including the one he’d given to the river. When each of his children turned age five—including, famously, his daughters—Rugon brought them on his war ships, where they witnessed their father slay rebels, traitors, and runaway criminals. At age six, his children attended all executions and punishments. At age seven, each was given a knife to finish off a captured enemy. At age eight, they began a brutal combat training regime that lasted into adulthood.

Perhaps his goal was to protect his spoils with a family bred for war. This twisted form of parenting, however, was not without its costs. Bloodlust and baseless warmongering festered in his sons. And while his daughters eventually became revered as the Seven Daughters of the River—founders of great houses still alive to this day—their stories are riddled with trauma, tragedy, and darker things.

Despite his horrendous efforts, things did not go Rugon’s way. In fact, it went the opposite. In the second decade of his kinghood, Rugon began to lose. Rebels and traitors slipped through his fists. Former chieftains, disgruntled at their meager piece of the pie, broke allegiances and fled the riverlands. One year a devastating swamp fire engulfed half the kingdom, followed by two years of famine.

But the most paramount of his losses (if you asked Rugon, that was) was the Blackrush Massacre. Rugon and his warboats had discovered a coalition of rebels and defective lords on the banks of a twisted, treacherous river. It coiled along the western fringes of the kingdom, so Rugon was far from his normal lines of support. The enemies hunkered down in an old fort, entrenched in a position uphill to Rugon.

But Rugon, strangely, was desperate for a victory. He commanded an attack. A reckless wager, by all accounts, but one he may have won—if not for the fogstorm. Whether it was due to a failure of reading the sky, blind ignorance, or just bad luck, the result was the same. As Rugon and his men charged ashore, Rivona’s worst type of storm swept over the Blackrush. Crackling lighting, booming thunder, torrential rain—all veiled in a thick sea of fog. Flash floods surged down the banks, sweeping men off their feet and into the Blackrush, boiling and frothing with currents that swallowed horses and smashed ships.

Slaughter.

Rugon’s only luck was that he escaped with his life.

I wrote “strangely” above because many scholars puzzle on why Rugon even bothered with the Blackrush. He faced internal problems, of course, but this can be expected of any fledgling kingdom. Great Forks was booming. His coffers overflowed. His fleet was unmatched. In many ways, his kingdom expanded from a solid core. So what was he trying to prove out on the fringes of the riverlands? Why take such a desperate risk?

Perhaps tumbling with luck has always been a keystone of Rivonan culture. Beneath the coursing canals and proud houses of Great Forks, well-known but tucked away into the city sewers, is a place called the Raven’s Nest. A den of gambling—cards, dice, snake fights, breath-or-death diving, among other vices—packed full of both locals and visitors alike. It is the city’s secret touristic attraction, allowed to exist only because of the sheer amount of gold that flows through its echoing halls.

I only know of this place because I followed Lorekeeper Chrasse there.

I decided not to report the theft to Chrasse. Instead, I followed him out into the city one night, and could scarcely believe my eyes when I ended up in the Raven’s Nest. Odd as he might be, the Lorekeeper lived his life by the books. He wasn’t just straight as an arrow, he was a whole quiver-full of the prickly things. The same Lorekeeper who had asked me to rewrite an entire paper because I’d misspelled a word on the third page. Him, in a place like this? You didn’t come to the Raven’s Nest to get up to anything good.

Weaving through the crowds after Chrasse, I followed him into a spacious chamber with birdcages, polished and tidy, lining the walls, each guarded by a keeper. Beneath each cage hung a sign denoting the name of the raven housed within. Blisterbeak. Phantom. Hoarfeather. Sage. The Scythe. Relga. Among much more. Gamblers shouted and pointed at one of these birds as they handed their money across the betting table. Lorekeeper Chrasse was one of these people. He approached the table and, reaching within his jacket, pulled out three pouches of coins. One of them I recognized as mine.

I cried out, but nobody heard me over the laughing, shouting, and squawks of ravens bouncing around the chamber. Chrasse stepped away from the table with a single card in his hand. That was when he met my eyes across the crowd. Too late, however. A hooded man had stepped in front of the betting table, closing bets for the round.

The game was starting, and all my money was in it.